The bourgeois democrats of Nasha Zhizn[1]
have launched a
campaign against “the mixture of Marxism and barbarism”. We strongly
recommend all class-conscious workers to look closely into the arguments of the
radical democrats.

Nothing facilitates an understanding of the political essence of developments as
greatly as their evaluation by one’s adversaries (that is, of course, unless the
latter are hopelessly stupid).

Nasha Zhizn does not like “the struggle of one section of the
Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party against the St. Petersburg Soviet of
Workers’ Deputies”, or, to be exact, the struggle of the
Social—Democrats against “non—partisan” class
organisations, as the newspaper itself puts it. Our radicals say that the
workers must unite. That means—that means that the leaders of the Soviet
who “are endeavouring to unite the entire proletariat without
distinction of political creed” are right. And the radicals triumphantly
show us up as contradicting our own principle of the “class
struggle”.

Learn from your enemies, comrade workers, who sympathise with the formation of
a non-partisan workers’ organisation, or are at least indifferent to this
desire! Call to mind the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, which speaks of
the transformation of the proletariat into a class in keeping
with the growth not only of its unity, but also of its political
consciousness.[2]
Remember the example of such countries as
England, where the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie
has been going on every where and at all times, in spite of which the
proletariat has remained disunited, its elected representatives have been
bought up by the bourgeoisie, its class-consciousness has been corrupted by the
ideologists of capital, its strength has been dissipated through. the desertion
of the masses of the workers by the labour aristocracy. Think of all this,
comrade workers, and you will come to the conclusion that only a
Social-Democratic proletariat is a proletariat conscious of its
class tasks. Down
with non-partisanship! Non-partisanship has always and everywhere been a weapon
and slogan of the bourgeoisie. Under certain conditions, we can and must march
together with proletarians who are not class-conscious, with proletarians who
accept non-proletarian doctrines (the programme of the
“Socialist-Revolutionaries”). But under no circumstances and at no time
must we relax our strict Party approach, under no circumstances and at no time
must we forget, or allow others to forget, that hostility to Social-Democracy
within the ranks of the proletariat is a relic of bourgeois views among the
proletariat.

Notes

[1]Nasha Zhizn (Our Life)—a daily paper close to the Left wing of
the Cadet Party. It appeared in St. Petersburg intermittently from November
6(19), 1904 to July 11(24), 1906.